<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-pacific-security-strategy-has-a-diesel-problem-wind-assisted-cargo-ships-can-help-solve-it/>
"Somewhere between the atolls of the Marshall Islands there is a cargo ship
called the
SV Juren Ae, moving freight on less than half the fuel of the
vessel she replaced.
She has sails. She exists because the Republic of the Marshall Islands, in
partnership with Germany, worked out that the most dangerous thing about their
supply lines was not the weather. It was the diesel.
In July, at State House in Suva, Anthony Albanese and Sitiveni Rabuka signed
the
Ocean of Peace Alliance, Fiji’s first mutual defence treaty, and
Australia’s fourth. Alongside it came the Vuvale Union, and more than a billion
Australian dollars of promised investment over a decade. It was the most
consequential thing an Australian Prime Minister has done in the Pacific in a
generation.
But Australia’s expanding Pacific security architecture has a diesel problem.
The domestic shipping fleets that hold island states together run almost
entirely on imported fuel. In the Pacific, the ocean is the highway. When a
cyclone season turns bad, or a war spikes the price of oil, it is the ships
carrying the food, the fuel and the people that stop.
On 12 June in Majuro, Fiji, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of
Micronesia, Kiribati, Naoero, Tuvalu and Vanuatu signed the Charter of the
Pacific Blue Shipping Partnership, with the Marshall Islands Transport Minister
its inaugural Chair. It seeks around $US500 million in blended finance over 10
years, including a $US300 million application to the Green Climate Fund for a
demonstration fleet of 10-12 new wind-assisted cargo vessels, maritime
maintenance facilities and crew training.
The photographs look AI generated, but these ships and their impact are real.
107 large commercial ships now have wind-assisted propulsion, and the
International Windship Association expects this number to double each year
moving forward. It works as a retrofit and new-build solution. The
Juren Ae
provides proof that this technology works and can scale across the Pacific.
This is the thing Australia says it wants and rarely gets: regionally designed,
regionally owned, ministerially mandated, costed, and not invented in Canberra.
This week, on the margins of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in
Koror, its members will convene a donor forum to fund it."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni **
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
